Dear Readers: I have a show this Thursday I am truly looking forward to doing – with fellow SLOB Charles Fettinger of Doo Doo Economics. Silvio and I will be asking him all about the new currency phenomenon, Bitcoin. (Click HERE this Thursday at 7 pm PST/9 pm CT/10 pm EST for the live show, or later for the podcast).

Recently Overstock, Tiger Direct and many other online retailers have begun accepting the secure internet money known as Bitcoin (BTC or #). Bitcoin cannot be hacked like credit cards because you pay directly with encrypted money instead of entrusting others with credit card account information. It is more like using cash instead of a credit card which limits your vulnerability.

Merchants love Bitcoin for many reasons. There are less transaction fees involved with Bitcoin and unlike insecure credit cards, Bitcoin was designed for use on the internet. That means retailers like Walmart can use Bitcoin securely to purchase goods from anywhere in the world without wire fees and without exchange rate risk.

So, when should you purchase Bitcoin?

The answer is a couple days after a major retailer begins accepting purchases via Bitcoin.

One of the best parts of my job is that I get to travel around California and attend events that are for and by grassroots leaders from around our Golden State. This past weekend I was in Fresno to attend an event being put on by the newly minted Tea Party California Caucus and what an event it was. Now let me be very clear I am no longer a Republican, I am a non-partisan voter which simply means I don’t care who gets the credit when a good is represented in leadership. I made a decision years ago that based on what I saw the California Republican Party doing to grassroots groups in our state that I would leave the Party and look for greener pastures. Having not actually found those among the already established political parties I chose to become one of the ever growing disenfranchised voters and hung out my “ no Party “ loyalty sign by re-registering as a Non Partisan Voter.

I digress, so there I am at this event with a bunch of Republicans, which sounds like the beginning of a great joke but this was serious, this was a phenomenal undertaking, this was about real change. You see for almost five years now Republicans have been complaining about Republicans that is exactly what started the tea party movement. But instead of just changing who these people align themselves with by changing parties they decided to fight for the Party they remember joining. There they were in Fresno, trying to work out a strategy even with GOP hacks in the audience watching and waiting and taking notes to report back to the elite that have held this Party hostage.

This huge crowd of “disgruntled” GOP folks was energized and ready to rumble. They have taken on the greatest challenge ever seen since the declining days of the Whig Party. And they are serious. They know the powers that be that keep the Republican Party in California as nothing more than a punch line in a joke will and are fighting them all the way. The good news for them is that the CAGOP usually stinks at what they do as witnessed by the lack of any real Republican wins over the years. These people are motivated by one thing, bringing California back to its Golden State excellence. They want to have real representation in Sacramento; they want to have a seat at the table when back room deals are being done by the brain trust in Sacramento and DC. Simply put, they want the Party they signed up for to exist in more than just name.

And if this doesn’t work what will these very loyal people do next? Well who knows, they are learning the rules, learning them well and are ready to operate around them.

The facts slowing coming out about the state’s first Cap and Trade auction seriously question whether the system is already being gamed by government, together with electric utilities.

Edison International made an announcement on Dec. 20, 2012: At California’s first Cap and Trade auction held back on Nov. 14, 2012, it offered to buy 21 times more pollution permits than allowed.

Edison’s overbidding error ended up amounting to 72 percent of all the bid offers and bailed out the Cap and Trade auction from failure. About a month later, Edison’s unregulated power-generating subsidiary company, Mission Energy, declared bankruptcy on Dec. 17, 2012.

CARB’s “Credibility called into question”

Bloomberg.com reported on Dec. 20, 2012 that Edison International “unintentionally” bid for twice as many pollution allowance permits as were offered for sale. Edison said its error was due to submitting a bid in the wrong format. For anyone who has ever worked in a large bureaucratic utility, Edison’s statement seems unbelievable. The number of hands it would typically take to review and sign off on any bid would have made highly suspicious any so-called bidding error resulting in 21 times the permits offered. Moreover, CARB provided training on auction procedures and held a test sale back on Aug. 30.

Bloomberg New Energy Finance analyst William Nelson said of the California Air Resources Board, “This revelation calls the agency’s credibility into question. For So Cal Ed, it appears now to have 1.61 million allowances it never intended to buy on its hands for which it spent approximately $16 million. The irony is that Edison was ultimately rewarded for its mistake, procuring credits at a price that is ‘in the money,’ today.”

Edison bid for approximately 16,632,000 pollution permits out of the total of 23.1 million permits allowed. After CARB disqualified Edison’s excessive bid, Edison ended up buying 4.05 million pollution permits. This was still 1.61 million more permits than its allowance of permits…

Edison arm declares bankruptcy

Coincidentally, on Dec. 17, 2012, Edison’s subsidiary, Mission Energy, filed for bankruptcy. Mission Energy listed $5.13 billion in assets and $5.09 billion in liabilities. Since both companies are separate legal entities, Edison International apparently did not dump the cost of its trading error onto insolvent Mission Energy. However, the law firm of Pillsbury, Winthrop, Shaw and Pittman, LLP in New York, representing creditor Chevron, did not respond to an inquiry whether the bankruptcy judge could “puncture the corporate veil” and void Edison International’s CARB auction bid….

Bid rigging and plausible collusion

This seriously calls into question whether either collusion or gaming of the bid system took place. Back on May 18, 2012, this writer warned that CARB’s auction system created perverse incentives for government to game or collude with electric utilities to generate more tax revenues for the state. Edison’s apparent auction bidding strategy was to bid for excessive permits to prevent the auction from being declared a failure and buy up all the permit allowances. Edison’s initial bid for 72 percent of the permits was then negotiated downward after the auction to almost exactly the same number of permits allowed.

Researchers with the San Diego-based National Marine Mammal Foundation reported the findings in the journal Current Biology Monday, highlighting a case study they say is the first documentation of marine mammal mimicry of human speech.

“It’s very unusual,” said study author Sam Ridgway, president of the foundation, and a veteran marine mammal researcher. “This is the first time a whale, or any cetacean, has been demonstrated to imitate human speech and make speech-like sounds.”

Dear Readers: While my hero, Captain Capitalism, is off taking a much needed break on his version of Calypso’s Island, he has kindly asked me to contribute a post. I pondered the topics, and decided to try and explain the unexplainable to his vast and savvy audience.

As a Goddess, you might think I would try to explain women. And while I am pleased to grace the “manosphere” today with my decidedly female viewpoint, I decided to try to lift the veil on an entity more troubling: California voters.

Many of you will recall that the “big red wave” of 2010 stopped at the Sierra Nevada. Why did California voters choose as Governor Jerry “Moonbeam” Brown while most other voters chose more sensible options for their states?

Here is the reason: In this state, you will find that many in Democratic Party leadership are corrupt; however, Republican politicos tend to be both corrupt and incompetent.

I would like to offer several examples. Many of you are involved in citizen activism through Tea Party groups. I am a “Palin Democrat” who helped organize the first San Diego area Tea Party in Feb. 2009, as part of the first nation-wide protest event. The local Republican party attempted to hijack this activity, making promises about locations and supplies they had no intention of keeping. The logo our group created was usurped as well. Later on, after the state GOP selected politico neophyte and charisma-deficient candidate Meg Whitman as their gubernatorial candidate, her staff called California Tea Party organizers and basically told our citizen activists exactly how we were going to help her campaign.

She did not bother to take questions regarding her positions on illegal immigration or global warming, which were issues over great concern to my California compatriots on that business call. She was neither informative nor gracious. Subsequently, there was little enthusiasm or involvement from our state’s grassroots conservatives. The result is as you see: Governor Brown (who, now that several cities have declared bankruptcy, is trying to up-end green-based restrictions on businesses).

Thanks to six Republicans in the California Senate and Assembly, the largest tax increase was passed on this citizens on this state. The former chairman of the state GOP, Ron Nehring, is reported to have said: “We will take over the Tea Party or destroy it.” The San Diego County chairman spends his time hacking the Twitter account of his Democratic Party counterpart, resulting in the suspension of his Twitter account. Needless to say, given the quality of the competition, California has truly become a one-party state. In fact, the most thrilling political development has been that the Libertarians have taken over a former GOP office in Sacramento: If a third party can succeed anywhere, it is most likely in this state.

Some supposed “Tea Party leaders” have tried to tell us how to deal with the Republican Party, based on their own (probably better) red-state standards. However, in this state, the usual rules of political sanity do not apply. So, we Tea Party peeps have got to make it up as we go along.

Now, is it time to despair of we in the Left Coast? No, I say to you. Californians have the initiative process, and during the last one, our voters said no to a tax increase on cigarettes (a sin tax, which would have normally passed). All the BIG spending measures were passed before 2008; after 2009, not so much. Citizen activists have gotten a new measure on the ballot to fight against the political use of union dues. We are so active, that some power-crazed members of the Assembly have introduced bills to make the initiative process more challenging.

As a Democrat, I have an advantage over many of by GOP or Libertarian friends: Fellow Democrats are more inclined to share their thoughts with me. So, I can tell you all that I have dialoged with (perhaps about 50) are very unhappy with Team Obama. Some will not bother to vote, some will vote Romney, and only 2 will vote Obama (focused only on the abortion issue). No, Romney will not win this state – but the margin he will lose by will be substantially less than McCain’s results in 2008. And, as I suspect these same margins will hold across the country, I prophesy that Obama loses by a landslide.

The biggest Tea Party news recently was the victory of Ted Cruz in Texas. However, the most significant story from that evening went unreported: The Hispanics did not show at the polls. My friend and talk show host Silvio Canto has the complete details (here is the link — http://www.blogtalkradio.com/cantotalk/2012/08/03/todays-message ). I suspect that California’s vast Hispanic population will also fail to show this November, too. (MUT Note; Silvio is the Cuban version of the Dos Equis man, so please check out his show on BlogTalkRadio.com).

The Captain has broken my heart, by saying he will not come out to California because we drive him crazy. I do understand – but I will keep a candle burning at the Shrine of Flaming Capitalism in hopes I might persuade him to give us a second chance, based on the general election results. Watch our propositions – if we reject the Brown Tax Increases, this will be a Tea Party win. Also, the San Diego mayor’s race may produce our future equivalent to Scott Walker (the candidate, Carl DeMaio, is awesome).

Dear Readers: A quick note to let you know the Young Prince made another New Media debut yesterday. Silvo Canto, host of CANTO TALK, interviewed my son about the new blog, the Young Prince’s Castle. My thanks to all of you who have left supportive comments. He gets so excited when he gets a response — just like the rest of us bloggers! 🙂

On June 25, 2012, I had an interview with Silvio Canto and Barry Casselman. I was interviewed on a Blog-Talk-Podcast called Canto Talk. (Click HERE to listen the podcast — I am on the last 15 minutes). It was about 15 minutes. Before the interview and in the interview I was nervous, but after I was just fine. The reason I was interviewed is because I started this blog. They asked me who did I think was going to win the election. I don’t know much about the government and politics right now but my best guess is Mitt Romney.

My son and Silvio got to talking about history, and the Young Prince noted he liked ancient Rome because, via our Romanian heritage, we have roots with that Empire. Silvo, with his Spanish heritage, also shares in this descent and the appreciation of ancient history. His other guest, Barry Casselman, was kind enough to add some of his experiences with Greek archeology. It was very serious stuff for such a young man.

Today my Dad would have been 84 years old. I still mourn his tragic and premature death at the hands of communist goons who took over the country of my birth and terrorized people for 41 years. Dad was barely 61 and healthy.

The benevolent dictator Ceausescu ruled Romania with an iron fist, lording over the frightened and defenseless population. His portrait was everywhere next to his hideous wife, “the Mother of the Country.” She had given herself that title along with a Ph.D. in chemistry. A fifth grade dropout, she had grandiose ideas of her faux accomplishments.

Dad hated Nicolae Ceausescu and his co-dictator wife, Elena, with a passion. He never hid his utter disdain for the arrogant, narcissistic, and uneducated couple who rose from the poverty of community organizing with empty promises of paternal and maternal care for the weak, the poor, and the downtrodden, to a life-style of the rich and famous.

Torturing, imprisoning, and killing millions of innocents, the Ceausescus had appropriated their possessions and amassed such a vast wealth, it was hard to tell how much money he had in Swiss bank accounts, how much art, jewels, land, and homes.

The dictator was proud that he gave “homes” to all his subjects, the proletariat, crowding country and city folk alike into high-rise concrete apartment blocks, while taking their homes and land for agricultural cooperatives or grandiose buildings and palaces dedicated to the Communist Party. Hastily built of reinforced concrete, the nine to twelve story apartments were Spartan, ugly, cold, dirty from the heavy pollution, and chipping concrete chunks like loose teeth.

The rest of the post is a must read!!!! I will be adding ROMANIAN CONSERVATIVE in the blog-roll, under Silvio’s Angels! Another great blog I will be checking often!

It looks as if Silvio will be adding another Romanian-descended pundit to his guest list — Word Warrior is slated to be a new guest for Canto Talk next month! Today, our local pundit had this to offer – JIMMY KIMMEL AT THE WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT’S DINNER. It is a link to a hilarious video — you need to check it out!

Fellow SLOB, B-Daddy, has some thoughts on Presidential Petulance: Obama’s response, to suspend agreements between AZ law enforcement and the DHS and to set up hot lines so that citizens with a grudge against law enforcement have a forum. Really? That’s some real leadership during tough times. When the going gets tough, the President skirts the law.
Beers with Demos had a letter form Barak: For a campaign that was down-right giddy over the prospects of potentially raising a billion dollars for their candidate as recently as 3 or 4 months ago, money in politics is suddenly a big problem again. And if they thought that they were getting to that figure on the backs of small donors, they’re simply lying.

Speaking of Catholic rebels, fellow SLOBs W.C. Varones and KT Cat went to the San Diego Mission yesterday to attend the first night of the Catholic “Fortnight for Freedom” rally. WC’s and KT’s Reports are must-reads!

First they came for the Catholics, and I did not speak up because I was not a Catholic…

The W.C. Varones Blog stands squarely with American Catholics as they defend their religious liberty from unprecedented assault by the Obama regime…It was the kickoff to a “Fortnight for Freedom.” Catholics will spend the next two weeks through July 4 working, praying, and spreading the word about the gross imposition of ObamaCare mandates against their religious beliefs. The mission sanctuary was packed — standing room only all the way to the back and spilling out into the parking lot.

My wife and I attended the Fortnight for Religious Freedom event last night at the Mission San Diego de Alcala. The place was packed and the event moved me to tears. I felt like I was at one of the original organizing meetings of the Cristados. I’ve got lots more to blog about this later, but let me just add one more thing. The presence of non-Catholics there in the Mission, standing with us in support of our freedoms, was awesome

In San Bernardino, the county has approved using eminent domain to seize bank-owned pools of “underwater mortgages” to get the county out of its over-indebted housing stagnation. The city of San Bernardino has the second highest poverty rate in the United States, after Detroit.

The cities of Fontana and Ontario have also approved joining the program. The city of Hesperia, however, rejected the idea. But such a bailout of underwater mortgages is likely to result in a number of foreseeable negative unintended consequences.

What happens if the county buys up underwater mortgages, but home values plunge again due to a double-dip recession triggered by an economic disaster, perhaps the European debt crisis? Economist Gary Schilling, who has called every recession correctly since the 1970s, is forecasting another 20 percent drop in national housing prices in 2012.